The Hunter and the Hunted
I was hungry, and it looked like I was about to be well-fed. In Star's Doll, the most common food source was, naturally, the mushrooms scattered all over the ground. "Well, I guess I'll just pick some mushrooms and eat them." I decided to wander around the Villa District to see if there was anything edible. Then, among the smaller ones, I spotted a mushroom standing tall and proud. It was a brown mushroom that looked like it could give my own "little guy" a run for its money. I plucked it and began to inspect it.
"Hmm... is this a poisonous mushroom? Or just a regular one?"
"Chanwoo-sama. If you give it to me, I will taste it and verify it for you personally."
"No way! You're not some royal food taster—what are you going to do if something happens to you?!"
"Royal... food taster?"
Mushrooms were the first food item that newbies starting Star's Doll would taste during the food tutorial. At the same time, they were famous for being the food that gave players a brutal initiation, inflicting a 'Poisoned' status effect within just one minute of gameplay. They were easy to find, but they carried a risk to match. They said the poison neutralized slightly if you grilled or boiled them, but that was only true for androids. For a human like me, even neutralized poison would surely be fatal. It wouldn't just end with a combat penalty like it would for an android.
"No colorful patterns, the smell is just earthy, and it doesn't sprout thorns or foam when touched... which means!"
"Which means?"
"This mushroom has about an 80% chance of being edible."
"E-eighty percent?!"
Survival game + Soulslike trait: nothing you pick up is 100% safe. The best I could do was use my own veteran methods to gauge its approximate safety. As a result, there was an 80% chance this mushroom was edible. And 80% was a probability worth taking a chance on.
"No! You cannot eat that. Chanwoo-sama!"
Revi, acting as if I might be fine but others wouldn't, snatched the mushroom right out of my hand. "What will you do if you end up in trouble because of that 20% chance?!"
"What will I do... I'll just think about that when the time comes, won't I?"
"Absolutely not! I will not let that happen, even if it means I have to die trying!"
Anyone watching would think we were mother and son. She seemed ready to eliminate anything that posed even a 1% risk to me. *Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp.*
"Ah, my mushroom..."
"Nom nom... I will eat things like this... nom nom nom... Chanwoo-sama, please eat something better... nom nom nom."
Revi had stolen the mushroom that had an 80% chance of being edible. She swallowed it safely, then grabbed my hand and led the way, as if telling me to follow her.
Weren't we supposed to be in the Villa District to find solar panels? How did it end up like this? Revi and I were hiding behind a large rock embedded in the middle of the road. About 10 meters in front of us, a 'deer' was grazing on the grass growing from the ground.
"Chanwoo-sama. Do you like venison?"
"Uh, well... I might know if it were pork or chicken, but I've never eaten deer before."
"Is that so?"
In the first place, Korea wasn't exactly a country that loved venison. I had never even eaten it, as it wasn't a common food source. At my words, Revi's eyes burned with more intensity than ever.
"Then I shall make it so you can eat it."
"Ah, right..."
Well, I preferred real meat over mushrooms anyway. Since it had come to this, I decided to help Revi and replenish our protein with a hearty breakfast-slash-lunch. But then.
Step.
"...?"
The basics of hunting were ambush. The surprise attack launched from a hidden position was the most important thing. That was why hunters' weapons were generally bows, which allowed for sniping from a distance. Of course, in the modern era, the trend was for more people to hunt with guns, but most people who hunted with guns did so just for fun. Since it was killing for entertainment rather than securing food for survival, they didn't care how the quality of the meat was damaged, so they used firearms that would 'explode' the target on impact.
In contrast, our goal was to harvest high-quality meat. Naturally, I had expected her to use a bow, which could finish the job in one blow with as little damage as possible, but?
"Code Name - P927JSO261PA, 4th Unit Revi, deploying."
No, why are you deploying? No, no, before that, Revi. Weren't we hiding to launch a surprise attack?
The combat android stood up abruptly and summoned a blade crackling with plasma current. Up until this point, I had hoped... it wouldn't be like this. After all, no matter how much of an android she was, her motif was ultimately 'human'. The average running speed of a normal adult was about 20 to 25 kilometers per hour. And the speed of an enhanced human, or android, modeled after a human was on average a bit faster, around 35 to 40 kilometers per hour. Of course, there was an overwhelming difference in stamina; while a human would tire quickly, an android could run almost indefinitely.
Actually, since Star's Doll was an open-world game with a vast capacity, stamina wasn't consumed during exploration unless you encountered flying beasts or monsters. But even for an android, you know. Tap-tap-tap-tap! Thud-thud-thud-thud! How could a bipedal animal beat a quadrupedal one? Among them, the deer was a very agile animal that could just run at over 50 kilometers per hour.
In other words, she had dashed out from behind the rock to start the hunt, but Revi wasn't catching the deer; she was barely managing to trot along behind it. "Revi! Don't you at least have a bow? A bow?"
"A bow... you say?"
"Yes! It's the golden rule to catch these things with a bow!"
"Even if you say that, I do not know how to craft a bow!"
Ugh. This combat-only combat-dummy! She knew how to use a bow, but she didn't know how to make one. At this point, I wondered what kind of school life she had at R.P.M. Revi just kept chasing after the deer that was running away endlessly.
"Chanwoo-sama. If we run like this for about an hour, the deer will eventually slow down."
"Uh... I suppose so."
After all, a deer was a living creature that breathed with lungs. It would eventually get tired and collapse.
"Yes. Then, at that point, I can cut its throat with my blade in one stroke and take it down!"
...Is that really necessary? What a display of inefficiency. Of course, that method was 'actually' possible in the game as well. As I said before, an android's stamina wouldn't decrease unless they were in combat. But think about it. A deer would drop instantly if you hit it once in the head with an arrow, or twice in the body. It was an act of chasing a herbivore for hours while holding the direction key. Who on earth would do such a crazy thing?
"For your information, I have already hunted two deer this way since arriving on Earth!"
Who would do it? My precious android, that's who. They say if your head is dull, your body suffers. I feel bad saying this to Revi, but she was the true embodiment of that saying. She was the very representative of physical suffering.
'I'd better just make a bow and arrows quickly.' The only silver lining here was that in survival games, the bow was a weapon used from the very beginning. The crafting method was also extremely simple. You could complete a low-grade bow with just the branches and string scattered around.
I was rummaging through the floor around a wrecked car, leaving Revi to chase the deer until it tired out, when suddenly.
"Eeeeeeek?!"
"!!"
"...Huh?"
A sound like a pig being slaughtered—no, a deer being slaughtered—echoed from behind me. 'It hasn't even been five minutes since she started running?' Or perhaps Revi's running speed exceeded the android average. As various thoughts crossed my mind, I turned my head toward the sound of the deer dying, which had felt unpleasant for a moment. Then, my eyes met Revi, who looked just as dumbfounded as I was. And I saw a deer... or rather, a lump of meat, pierced through the chest by a long tentacle, dangling in the air as it was being drained of blood and turning into a 'mummy'.
"Chanw—!"
"Shh."
I immediately brought my finger to my lips in a gesture for silence to Revi, who had looked back at me. Perhaps she understood my intention, as she covered her mouth with both hands. ...It was a relief. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have known what would come out next from the window of the dilapidated villa where the tentacle had emerged.
Being nocturnal was just a label for creatures that acted at night. Conversely, just because we humans were diurnal animals that were active in the morning didn't mean we automatically fell asleep as soon as evening came. Just as it was possible for humans to be nocturnal and work at dawn if they put their minds to it, there was no guarantee that monsters couldn't be diurnal. Just the other day, I had encountered such a rare type.
'We're in trouble.'
The height of the villa where the tentacle had emerged was about 7 stories. Moreover, beyond the window where the single tentacle had appeared, I could see a thick tentacle that had just hunted the deer writhing endlessly. If those were several 'individual entities' together, it would be a stroke of luck. If we took out a few mobs as an example, we could escape in the gap created by their shock at seeing their kin die. But... if it was a worst-case scenario. What if all those tentacles inside the villa were part of one single body? If so, this place was surely a boss room. In other words, it was the stage where I was most likely to meet the 'Game Over' screen.